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<H1><P ALIGN=CENTER>Vis5D</H1>

<H2>Introduction</H2>

Vis5D is a system for interactive visualization of large 5-D gridded
data sets such as those made by numeric weather models.  One can make
isosurfaces, contour line slices, colored slices, volume renderings,
etc of data in a 3-D
grid then rotate and animate the image in real time.  There's also a
feature for wind/trajectory tracing, a way to make text anotations for
publications, etc.<P>

Here's a screen shot of Vis5D:<p>

<IMG src="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/vis5d.gif">
<BR>

Click <A HREF="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/vis5d1.gif"> here </A>
or <A HREF="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/vis5d2.gif"> here </A>
for more sample images.<P>

Vis5D was written by the
<A HREF="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/vis.html"> Visualization Project</A>
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
<A HREF="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/"> Space Science and Engineering Center</A>
(SSEC) by
<A HREF="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/homepage1.html"> Bill Hibbard </A> and
<A HREF="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~brianp/homepage1.html"> Brian Paul </A>
with the help of:<p>

<ul>
<li>Andre Battaiola of CPTEC, Sao Paulo, Brazil
<li>Dave Santek of the SSEC
<li>Marie-Francoise Voidrot-Martinez of the French Meteorology Office.
<li>Dave Kamins and Jeff Vroom of Stellar Computer, Inc.
<li>Simon Baas and Hans de Jong of the Netherlands for the HP/VOGL port
<li>Pratish Shah of Kubota Computer for the Kubota port
<LI>Mike Stroyan of HP for the PEX support
</ul>

The development of Vis5D was supported by the NASA Marshall Space Flight
Center<P>


<BR>
<H2>System Requirements</H2>

Vis5D 4.2, the most recent version, works with the following systems:<p>

<UL>
<LI><B>Silicon Graphics</B> workstations with IRIX 4.x or later.
    Multiple CPUs are used when present.
<LI><B>IBM RS/6000</B> workstations with AIX 3 or later.  OpenGL-based
     3-D hardware is supported.
<LI><B>Sun</B> workstations with SunOS 5.x or later.
<LI><B>HP</B> workstations with HP-UX A.09.01 or later.  PEX-based 3-D
    hardware is supported.
<LI><B>DEC Alpha</B> workstations with OSF/1 V1.3 or later.
<LI><B>IBM PC compatibles</B> with Linux v1.2 or later.  90MHz Pentium or
    faster CPU recommended.
</UL>

Notes:
<UL>
<LI>At least 32 MB of RAM is recommended in all cases.
<LI>At least 8-bit color is needed, 24-bit color is recommended.
<LI>On systems without 3-D hardware rendering is done in software with the
    <A HREF="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/bp/Mesa.html">Mesa</A> library.
    3-D graphics hardware is highly recommended.
</UL>

The size of your memory determines the size of data set you can visualize.
You should have two bytes of memory for each point in your data set in
order to have maximum interactivity.  However, you can visualize larger
data sets with reduced interactivity.<p>


<BR>
<H2>How to get Vis5D</H2>

Vis5D is available by anonymous ftp from
<A HREF="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/vis5d">iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/vis5d</A>.
The distribution consists of two files:
<UL>
<LI><A HREF="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/vis5d/vis5d-4.2.tar.Z">
    vis5d-4.2.tar.Z</A> - source code and documenation (5.4MB)
<LI><A HREF="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/vis5d/vis5d-data.tar.Z">
    vis5d-data.tar.Z</A> - sample data sets, map files, topography
     files (4.7MB)
</UL>

If you've used Vis5D in the past you do not need the vis5d-data.tar.Z file
since you should already have the files it contains.<P>

The <A HREF="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/vis5d/README"> README </A>
file contains the complete Vis5D documentation including compilation and
installation instructions (section 2).<P>

Manual ftp operation:<p>

<pre>
% <B>ftp iris.ssec.wisc.edu</B>
Connected to iris.ssec.wisc.edu
Name:  <B>anonymous</B>
Guest login ok, type your name as password.
Password:  <B>myname@address</B>
ftp> <B>cd pub/vis5d</B>
ftp> <B>asc</B>
ftp> <B>get README</B>
ftp> <B>bin</B>
ftp> <B>get vis5d-4.2.tar.Z</B>
ftp> <B>get vis5d-data.tar.Z</B>
ftp> <B>bye</B>
</pre>

Precompiled Vis5D executables (along with map and topography files) are
available for the following systems:<p>

<ul>
<li> <a href="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.irix5.viewer.tar.Z">SGI / IRIX 5.x</a>
<li> <a href="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.irix4.viewer.tar.Z">SGI / IRIX 4.x</a>
<li> <a href="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.ibm.viewer.tar.Z">IBM R6000 / AIX</a>
<li> <a href="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.hp.viewer.tar.Z">HP / HP-UX</a>
<li> <a href="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.hp-pex.viewer.tar.Z">HP / HP-UX (PEX)</a>
<li> <a href="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.alpha.viewer.tar.Z">DEC Alpha / OSF1</a>
<li> <a href="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.sunos5.viewer.tar.Z">SUN / SunOS 5.x</a>
<li> <a href="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.linux.viewer.tar.Z">Pentium / LINUX</a>
</ul>

Your Web browser will ask where to put the file and what to name it.  Put
it in the directory where you want to install Vis5D, and name it vis5d.tar
(your browser should automatically uncompress the file).  Then enter the
command "tar -xvf vis5d.tar" (make sure you're in the dirctory where you
want to install Vis5D).  Now Vis5D is installed.  You can get rid of the
tar file by entering the command "rm vis5d.tar".<P>

<H3>Installing Linux on your PC</H3>

You can run Vis5D on your PC if you install the Linux operating system.
It is a freeware version of Unix and you can find everything you need to
know about it at <a href="http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/linux.html">The
Linux Documentation Project Home Page</a>.  Note that about 2/3 of the way
down the page you'll find a list of commercial Linux products that make
installation easy.<p>


<H3>If you are in Europe</H3>

Recently, users in Europe have had problems with low bandwidth to North
American ftp servers.  The
<A HREF="http://www.dkrz.de">Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum</A>
has offered to serve as a mirror site for our software.  Here are links
to the files available:

<UL>
<LI><A HREF="ftp://ftp.dkrz.de/pub/visu/ssec/vis5d-4.2/README">Vis5D README</A>
<LI><A HREF="ftp://ftp.dkrz.de/pub/visu/ssec/vis5d-4.2/vis5d-4.2.tar.Z">
    vis5d-4.2.tar.Z</A>
<LI><A HREF="ftp://ftp.dkrz.de/pub/visu/ssec/vis5d-4.2/vis5d-data.tar.Z">
    vis5d-data.tar.Z</A>
<LI><A HREF="ftp://ftp.dkrz.de/pub/visu/ssec/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.irix5.viewer.tar.Z">SGI / IRIX 5.x executable and map files</A>
<LI><A HREF="ftp://ftp.dkrz.de/pub/visu/ssec/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.irix4.viewer.tar.Z">SGI / IRIX 4.x executable and map files</A>
<LI><A HREF="ftp://ftp.dkrz.de/pub/visu/ssec/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.ibm.viewer.tar.Z">IBM RS/6000 / AIX executable and map files</A>
<LI><A HREF="ftp://ftp.dkrz.de/pub/visu/ssec/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.hp.viewer.tar.Z">HP / HP-UX executable and map files</A>
<LI><A HREF="ftp://ftp.dkrz.de/pub/visu/ssec/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.alpha.viewer.tar.Z">DEC Alpha / OSF/1 executable and map files</A>
<LI><A HREF="ftp://ftp.dkrz.de/pub/visu/ssec/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.sunos5.viewer.tar.Z">Sun / SunOS 5.x executable and map files</A>
<LI><A HREF="ftp://ftp.dkrz.de/pub/visu/ssec/vis5d-4.2/vis5d.linux.viewer.tar.Z">PC / Linux executable and map files</A>
<LI><A HREF="ftp://ftp.dkrz.de/pub/visu/ssec/vis5d-4.2/">or browse the site</A>
</UL>

Manual ftp operation:<p>

<PRE>
% <B>ftp ftp.dkrz.de</B>
Connected to info.dkrz.de
Name:  <B>anonymous</B>
Guest login ok, type your name as password.
Password:  <B>myname@address</B>
ftp> <B>cd pub/visu/ssec/vis5d-4.2</B>
ftp> <B>asc</B>
ftp> <B>get README</B>
ftp> <B>bin</B>
ftp> <B>get vis5d-4.2.tar.Z</B>
ftp> <B>get vis5d-data.tar.Z</B>
ftp> <B>bye</B>
</PRE>


Your Web browser will ask where to put the file and what to name it.  Put
it in the directory where you want to install Vis5D, and name it vis5d.tar
(your browser should automatically uncompress the file).  Then enter the
command "tar -xvf vis5d.tar" (make sure you're in the dirctory where you
want to install Vis5D).  Now Vis5D is installed.  You can get rid of the
tar file by entering the command "rm vis5d.tar".<P>


<BR>
<H2>Serving and Viewing Vis5D Files Via the Web</H2>

In order to make it easy for modelers to examine each other's data sets,
we have defined Vis5D files as a medium for exchanging information on the
World Wide Web.  Links to Vis5D files can be embedded in Web pages (just as
links to GIF files can be embedded in web pages), and Mosaic can
automatically invoke Vis5D to view them (just as it automatically invokes
xv to view GIF files).<p>

Click
<a href="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/view5d.html">here</a>
to find out how to do it.<p>



<BR>
<H2>Getting Help</H2>

Vis5D is free software and as such we do not provide real support
for it.  However, we will be happy to answer questions and/or help with
minor problems (preferably by email).<P>

Email can be sent to
Bill Hibbard at
<A HREF="mailto:whibbard@macc.wisc.edu">whibbard@macc.wisc.edu</A>.<P>

U.S. Mail can be sent to:<p>
<PRE>
Space Science and Engineering Center
University of Wisconsin - Madison
1225 W. Dayton St.
Madison, WI  53706
</PRE>

There is a Vis5D mailing list.  To subscribe to it send Bill or Brian a message
asking to be subscribed.  To post to the list address your message to vis5d-list@
ssec.wisc.edu.<P>


<BR>
<H2>Other links</H2>

The <A HREF="vis5d-faq.html">Vis5D FAQ</A>
may answer a question you have about installing or using Vis5D.<P>

The <A HREF="script.html">Vis5D scripting
document</A> describes the new Tcl scripting interface in Vis5D 4.2<P>

The <A HREF="api.html">Vis5D API document</A>
describes the internal programming interface to Vis5D.  This is intended for
programmers only.<P>

Check out how the
<a href="http://java.meteor.wisc.edu/vis5d-oper.html">UW-NMS</a>
group is using Vis5D to visualize operational forecasts.<p>

We also have a home page for
<a href="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/visad.html">VisAD</a>
.<p>





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Last updated on April 12, 1996.

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